Auto Racing: For Want of a Shaft

Before last week's 24-hour Daytona
Continental road race even ended, a group of grim-faced Ford Motor Co.
officials boarded a plane for Detroit, carrying a dozen battered
14-inch rods of steel. The rods were power output shafts for the
transmissions of six 490-h.p. Mark II racers that Ford had entered in
the season's first big sports-car racewith high hopes of retaining
the world manufacturers' championship it had wrested away from Italy's
Enzo Ferrari last year with victories at Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans.
Ford had earmarked $6,000,000 for the campaign. The transmission output
shafts accounted for less than $750but for...